Yoga for the Soul

Maria Ines Echeverria

Andre Haralyi

Yoga 120

28 September 2016

Essay #1

        As a person, I struggle with purifying myself mentally. Being surrounded by a society where money, success, and luxury are promoted as the elements of having a “good life”.  In the mornings, I wake up and check my phone. After I take a shower, I check my phone, I eat, I check my phone. There is this constant habit through out the day of checking instagram, Facebook, snapchat, CNN, etc, or even just checking phone for the sake of checking it. Applying the concepts in Niyamas can strength my life mentally and effect other significant factors to make me a stronger grounded person. Purifying oneself from the unnecessary information on a little screen can benefit me from envious emotions that may arise. Ultimately the final goal of yoga, I believe, is to stay true to myself. By acting on that I need to be aware of the world around me and listen to my body, mind, and soul. What matters at the end of the day is how I feel and how I treat others, giving them the same respect, as I would want from someone else. Worrying about the earthly things like possessions, money, or fame only pollutes us and stops us from achieving inner peace and appreciation to the world given to us. Personally, aparigrah is the principal of Yamas that sticks out to me like a sore thumb. I am a stubborn person when it comes to “letting go of things”. When something doesn’t come out as planned, I tend to hang onto that negative feeling and start feeling disappointment about myself. But idea of “letting go” or “surrendering” will help me purify from those emotional toxin that are only going to affect me in thinking I am not good enough, which is wrong because I am, that is what I struggle with.